While the government’s encouragement—and even reliance—on third-party monitoring of citizens is not a new phenomenon, the emergency exception to the SCA adopted in the Patriot Act oversteps constitutional bounds by providing the executive with the incentive to exaggerate potential threats in order to gain the collaboration of the telecommunications companies. The policies underlying this strategy are similar to those explained and adapted by the Sixth Circuit while articulating its Clean Hands Exception.Brendan Coffman argues that by allowing the government to gain access to evidence it normally would not be able to obtain, and ignoring the normal parameters of the exclusionary rule, the Sixth Circuit created a regime encouraging complicity between law enforcement and private citizens. Similarly, the arguments running contrary to the Clean Hands Exception ring true when assessing the emergency exception: the government has too great an incentive to encourage third parties to violate the privacy rights of others, and the third parties, especially telecommunications companies, are ultimately trapped in a Hobson’s Choice.